Three years ago today a systematic campaign targeting Egypt’s Christian community by Muslim Brotherhood supporters began, causing the destruction of dozens of churches, monasteries, Christian businesses and homes across Egypt – attacks unprecedented for several centuries.

Even today many of these churches and monasteries that were looted and torched during August 2013 remain in disrepair as attacks on Christians continue in certain areas of Egypt.

Several months after the Muslim Brotherhood carved this path of destruction through the Egyptian Christian community, I had the opportunity to visit some of these sites and meet with Coptic church leaders to discuss the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in these attacks.

The Coptic Christian community in Egypt is significant not only because it is one of the oldest and largest Christian communities in the Middle East, but the Coptic Christians make up more than half of the Christians still remaining in the Middle East.

Escorted by Father Anthony Hanna of St. Mary and St. Mina’s Coptic Church in Concord, California, in April 2014 we traveled deep into Upper Egypt, where many of the attacks by the Muslim Brotherhood occurred.

One of the first indications of how tense the situation remained even months after the attacks were the levels of security we had to pass through to attend the Easter service at St. Mark’s Coptic Cathedral.

Our driver was not even allowed close to the cathedral entrance, so we were dropped off about a quarter mile away. As we passed through the gates, we were checked for our passports and the passes to attend the service. This would be the first of seven ID checks we had to go through to enter the cathedral on the holiest holiday for Christians around the world.

There was good reason for concern for security. A year earlier, the cathedral hadbeen attacked during a funeral by Muslim mobs without any intervention by police under the government of then-President Mohamed Morsi, a top Muslim Brotherhood leader.

Several days later we had lunch with Father Hanna, where he introduced us to a young Coptic man, “George,” who had been been kidnapped for eight days in January 2013. The son of a prominent Coptic businessman, he was held until his family paid a $100,000 ransom.

“George” described his captivity at the hands of his Islamist captors. Initially he was beaten, and subjected to anti-Christian taunts throughout his captivity. When his captors had obtained the ransom, but before he was released, “George” was blindfolded and a gun held to his head, where he was told that if he didn’t renounce his Christian faith and accept Islam, he would be killed. Unable to get him to renounce his faith and with their ransom secured, “George” was released.

Sadly, the kidnapping of Christians in Egypt is still a regular occurrence.

Later that evening, Father Hanna, My Unconstrained Analytics colleague Stephen Coughlin, and myself received a personal audience with Pope Tawadros II at his office and residence in the St. Mark’s Cathedral compound. Again, we had to pass through layers of security, including armored vehicles stationed at the cathedral gates.

During our audience, Pope Tawadros detailed the ongoing fallout of the Muslim Brotherhood attacks in August 2013 and his reasons for backing Morsi’s ouster following the massive June 30 protests.

Two of the things he specifically cited were the April 2013 attacks on the cathedral, which he noted was without precedent in Coptic history and which a Morsi aide had blamed Christians for, and the torture of Christian protesters in March 2013 by Muslim Brotherhood cadres at a mosque following protests against the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi.

Pope Tawadros had been praised for speaking out during the Muslim Brotherhood’s August 2013 ‘Reign of Terror’ for discouraging attempts to save the churches and the monasteries. “We could replace the buildings, we couldn’t replace the people,” he told us.

Several days later Father Hanna and I set out for Upper Egypt with arrangements made by Pope Tawadros’ staff. Here is a video of Father Hanna discussing our trip into Upper Egypt with CBN News.

Murder in Minya

Our first stop in Upper Egypt was in Minya, one of the largest cities in Upper Egypt about 140 miles south of Cairo. A majority of Egypt’s Christian community lives in Upper Egypt, and considerable destruction occurred in the Minya region.

We initially met with Bishop Makarios, who had survived an assassination attemptjust months before. Bishop Makarios noted was that Christian homes and businesses in Minya had been marked with an “X” by Muslim Brotherhood supporters in the days prior to the attacks, much as ISIS did with Christian homes in Mosul, Iraq two years later.

During their ‘Reign of Terror’ the Muslim Brotherhood had openly encouraged the attacks, such as this justification for retaliation posted on the Facebook page of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party in Helwan…

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…In July 2014, Father Hanna and I met with a number of congressional leaders in Washington D.C. describing what we found on our trip and the necessity to changing the U.S. government’s current openness to the Muslim Brotherhood that had waged the August 2013 terror campaign.

Steve Coughlin and I met again with Pope Tawadros last September when we escorted a congressional delegation to Egypt. He told us of the efforts by the Egyptian government to help rebuild the churches – a promise by President Sisi that is being fulfilled.

As of Feb & acc to Maspero Youth Union, military completed restoration of 41/65 damaged churches since Aug 14. #Egypt

Three years on from the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘Reign of Terror’ it seems time for Egypt to ensure that all Egyptians enjoy equal protection under the law free from discrimination. And it is overdue for the U.S. government to designate the Muslim Brotherhood as the terrorist group it is and always has been, as witnessed by the events of August 2013.

On June 11, I delivered a lecture on Capitol Hill, Washington D.C. It was part of Coptic Solidarity’s sixth annual conference. My topic was the failures and cover ups of the Western establishment—academia, government, and mainstream media—concerning the rampant persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The 15-minute video of the talk follows:

Christian Coptic Priest Father Samuel reacts as he stands inside the burned and heavily damaged St. Mousa church in Minya, Egypt . Dozens of churches were burned as well as businesses and homes during a surge of violence against Egypt’s Christian minority after security forces raided two Islamist protest sit in camps on August 14.(Photo by Heidi Levine/Sipa Press)./LEVINE_1327.21/Credit:LEVINE/SIPA/1308301358

In the nearly five years of turmoil that have followed the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011, no group in Egypt has suffered more than the 15 million Coptic Christians. Both a religious and ethnic minority, the Copts are descended from the native population of Egypt who lived and ruled there from the time of the pharaohs until the Roman conquest in 31 B.C. They are the largest Christian community in the Middle East today.

Copts have long been the target of discrimination and persecution in the majority-Arab nation. But this ancient people faced a terrifying new prospect in 2012: Muslim Brotherhood rule.

After Mubarak was ousted, the violence began almost immediately. Churches and schools were burned; peaceful protestors were massacred. When parliamentary elections were held nine months later, they were swept by the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist parties. When Mohamed Morsi won the presidential election in May 2012, the party’s victory looked complete. The same year, Morsi gave himself unlimited powers and the party drafted a new constitution inspired by Sharia law.

Morsi benefitted from the organizational advantage of the Muslim Brotherhood. Backed by imams preaching the benefits of religious rule, the previously banned political party was able to defeat the fractured coalitions of the pro-West, liberal, and secular candidates.

“They used thugs to carry out political intimidation against Christians,” a former member of Egyptian Parliament told the Washington Free Beacon. Chants celebrating the Brotherhood victory echoed through the streets of Cairo. “Morsi won! Copts out!”

During Morsi’s rule, Christians were murdered and tortured by the hundreds. Attacks and abductions of Christian children spiked significantly. “Most Americans do not know how vicious and bloody the Muslim Brotherhood is,” Ahmed, a 24-year old secular Muslim, said. “They really can’t understand.”

Public accusations of blasphemy also became ubiquitous. A Facebook post interpreted as undermining Islam could bring a mob of fundamentalists with rocks and Molotov cocktails to the homes of Christians, surrounding them with families trapped inside. Sham trials with no legal representation would follow. Anti-Christian terrorism was not punished, but the wrong words often landed Copts in prison, forcing the church to make public apologies and families to leave their towns and villages.

Lydia, an activist who provides relief supplies to torn Christian communities in Upper Egypt, and who requested that only her first name be used to preserve her safety and that of her colleagues, witnessed the Muslim Brotherhood offer the very poorest Egyptians social services that bought their allegiance. “When you have no food or money, you will listen to anyone who gives you the resources your family desperately needs,” Lydia said. “They brainwash the illiterate with extremism so they hurt Christians.”

Still, Morsi’s authoritarian rule—rewriting the constitution, disbanding the Egyptian parliament, tossing potentially obstructive judges into jail—was not long lived. Barely a year after he assumed office, a reported 35 million citizens took to the streets to protest his rule, leading the Egyptian military, under Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, to remove him from power in July 2013.

Sen. James Lankford (R., Okla.) told the Free Beacon that had al-Sisi not responded, the promise of Egyptian Democracy would have died. “What it seemed the Egyptian people wanted was more opportunity to be able have some sort of functioning democracy, elections, input into their own government,” Lankford said. “It was the immediate understanding as soon as the Muslim Brotherhood was elected, that was the last election Egypt would have.”

In 2014, al-Sisi was elected Egypt’s new president. He won a solid electoral victory, giving him control of the Egyptian government with the responsibilities of forming a new constitution, a new parliament, and a new judicial system. The Coptic Church fervently supported al-Sisi’s candidacy because the new president promised Copts equality in citizenship, security in their communities, and the ability to build places of worship.

The new Egyptian president challenged the leaders of the Islamic world to push a more moderate message. In December 2014, hundreds of Christian and Muslim theologians gathered at al-Azhar, Egypt’s leading mosque and religious university, participated in a conference to fight “jihad” and promote inclusion. Al-Sisi ambitiously called for a “religious revolution” in January 2015, saying that clerics bear responsibility for the growing extremism in the Middle East.

As president, al-Sisi took many symbolic steps to integrate the Coptic community with the majority Sunni population. In a surprise to most Egyptians, al-Sisi attended a mass at Saint Mark Orthodox Cathedral in Cairo on Christmas Eve, a first for any Egyptian president. Al-Sisi regularly invites Pope Tawadros II to appear beside him when he announces major policy rollouts or requests public dialogue from senior advisers.

Al-Sisi also appointed two Copts as members of his cabinet. Under the constitution, the president of Egypt has the power to select 10 members of parliament. Political observers believe he will select Copts to fill a majority of those appointed seats to offer a more representative parliament.

“Our lives haven’t changed much but one positive result of the revolution is the Egyptian people have politically woken up,” said Hala, a Mubarak-era government official who also wished to be identified by her first name only because she fears political retribution. “We no longer accept what we are told. Egyptians are at least aware of the government’s actions and they are more aware of the troubles Copts face.”

But while al-Sisi’s administration provides a welcome change of tone toward the Coptic community, the day-to-day lives of Copts remain little changed from the Mubarak days.

This is the first of a two-part post on the 21 Egyptian martyrs killed in Libya. This first part is a reflection, as a Christian, on aspects of this event and reactions to it. The second part, ‘A message signed with blood to the Nation of the Cross’ consists of explanatory notes on the texts – spoken and written – which were part of the Islamic State’s film of their ritual beheadings. This post has also appeared onLapido media.

The Islamic State sent me a letter this week. This letter was in the form of a short film produced by the Islamic State’s Al-Hayat Media centre. This was not addressed to me personally, but to all Christians everywhere. Its title was A Message Signed with BLOOD to the Nation of the Cross. This was a video of the ritual slaughter of the 21 Egyptian Christians. Their blood flowing in the ocean waves was the ‘signature’ at the end of the video.

As I write this it is Ash Wednesday. This is the start of forty days of Lent, a period of fasting and contemplation for Christians all over the world. For many centuries it has been a custom of Christians to receive a mark of the cross in ash upon the forehead as a sign of repentance.

As I received this mark of the cross today I was thinking of the 21 Egyptian Christian martyrs. Copts permanently bear the sign of the cross, tattooed on their wrists, as a sign that they will refuse to renounce their beliefs.

A Coptic Girl with a Wrist Cross Tatoo

I intend to read out these men’s names at our morning church services this Sunday, here in Melbourne, Australia. And I also choose to honour them today by writing to acknowledge the truth about why they were killed, and in particular the explanation given by their killers.

I also wish to record, as a Christian and a pastor, my intense protest at theWhite House official statement of February 15 2015 concerning this event. This makes no mention of the reason the twenty one were killed: their Christian faith. This culpable denial dishonours them, as it dishonours me and Christians everywhere.

The White House statement claimed that “ISIL’s barbarity knows no bounds. It is unconstrained by faith, sect or ethnicity.” Not true. The Islamic State’s actions are constrained by its theology, and in this case its targets are also determined on religious grounds; they were Christians. It is not an endorsement of the killers’ Islamic beliefs to acknowledge that these jihadis follow a form of Islam, and that their sect and faith does constrain their behaviour accordingly.

President Obama has defended his administration’s misrepresentations on the grounds that the radicals are “desperate for legitimacy” so “They try to portray themselves as religious leaders, holy warriors in defense of Islam.” But these are not desperate people. They are shockingly confident in their beliefs. They do not “try to portray themselves” as Islamic: they sincerely believe they are. Christopher Hitchens got it right over a decade ago when he suggested of Al Qa’ida recruits that “they believe their own propaganda,” and “absolutely subscribe to the tenets of their version … of their religion, Islam.”

Obama also stated that “we must never accept the premise that they put forward, because it is a lie.” This too is nonsense. A lie is a deliberate intention to deceive, and these self-described jihadis are – at least by their own understanding – speaking the absolute truth when they claim to speak for Islam.

Some years ago I had the privilege of reading the Gospel at a Coptic service held in St Paul’s Anglican Cathedral, here in Melbourne. The service was held to commemorate the 22 martyrs of the attack on Al-Qiddisin Church in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve. It was led by Bishop Suriel, Melbourne’s Coptic bishop.

The Al-Qiddisin martyr’s service impressed me deeply. I long pondered the fact that the Coptic church of Egypt has been grieving over the freshly dug graves of its martyred sons and daughters since the dawn of Christianity. As I sat through the service and sung the hymns about martyrdom, I thought, “So this is what it means to be a Copt”.

The Islamic State video, a polished production, depicts 21 Christian men, hands bound behind them, being led one-by-one along a beach in Libya to a point where they are forced to bow down with their heads in the sand, and there they are beheaded, crying out Ya Rabbi Yasou ‘Lord Jesus!’, some reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Severed heads were then placed on top of each corpse, their Muslim slayer standing over them. The final film shots show the Mediterranean washing red with their blood.

One of the Coptic victims with his killer

The whole event was meticulously choreographed and rehearsed. The video’s obvious purpose is to humiliate and terrorise Christians, whom it derisively calls, “The Nation of the Cross”. I admire the courage of the martyrs, who did not disown the name of Christ and the cross to follow Islam, even as they were being mocked and killed by their tormentors.

It is indisputable (see Part 2) that the whole script of this video is intensely religious. It is packed with references to the Qur’an and the Hadiths of Muhammad. As Graeme Wood comments inan important recent Atlantic Monthly article, the Islamic State adherents are constantly referencing Islam’s sacred texts. In their everyday speech, “Koranic quotations are ubiquitous”. This film is no exception. For anyone who knows anything about Islam it is impossible to view this film without being aware of the heavy constraining influence of the Qur’an and the Hadiths on the script. These references are essential for understanding the true context, meaning and intent of the film.

The Egyptian government reacted angrily to the executions, bombing Islamic State positions inside Libya. Egypt was incensed about this massacre – and rightly so – but it has a very long and enduring track record of not prosecuting Muslims who have massacred Christians within its own borders. General Al-Sisi is a leader who has been complicit in this peculiar form of Muslim cowardice. This moral inconsistency is causing great division and confusion among Copts at the present time.

My comment after the Al-Qiddisi massacre in January 2011 remains as valid now as it was then:

“I deplore the lack of freedom of religion in Egypt, the authorities’ apparent unwillingness to protect the indigenous Christian minority and its places of worship, and the lamentable track record of the Egyptian justice system in securing criminal convictions against those who have targeted Christians for attack. I call upon Egypt’s leaders to respond to these abuses honestly and with integrity, without making excuses or indulging in denial.”

There is a double standard in the house of Islam. Examples are legion. The Jordanian royal house has been prominent in speaking up against attacks against Christians in Iraq and Syria, yet at the time when the Common Word letter was being released to the Christian world in 2008 under Jordanian royal sponsorship, its own Royal Aal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought had posted on its website fatwas by its Chief Scholar – the former Mufti of Jordan – which declared death for Christians for the crime of leaving Islam, and even identified one person by name (see here).

King Abdullah has on the one hand been a champion of the rights of displaced Christians in the Middle East, and God knows they surely need one. On the other hand he has held up the notorious Pact of Umar as evidence of Jordan’s history of religious tolerance:

“Jerusalem, which is, regrettably, subject to the worst forms of Judaisation today, stands witness to fourteen centuries of deep, solid and fraternal relations between Muslims and Christians, enhanced by the Pact of Omar [ibn al-Khattab], and promoted by my grandfather, Sharif Hussein bin Ali, may God bless his soul.”

In contrast to this historical revisionism, the renowned Muslim jurist Ibn Kathir, accurately described the intent and effect of the conditions of the Pact of Umar as guaranteeing the continued degradation of Christians under Islamic rule:

“This is why the Leader of the faithful ‘Umar bin Al-Khattab, may Allah be pleased with him, demanded his well-known conditions be met by the Christians, these conditions that ensured their continued humiliation, degradation and disgrace.”

Readers who read classical Arabic may consult the Royal Jordan Aal al-Bayt Institute’s own database of commentaries here, to view Ibn Kathir’s original text.

The problem is that as long as Muslims allow derogatory words like mushrik‘associator, polytheist’ and kafir ‘infidel’ to be applied to Christians, while also preaching Qur’anic verses which denigrate non-Muslims, the hostility and hatred can only continue.

As long as the highest legal authorities of the Islamic mainstream continue to assert the right of Muslims to kill those who leave Islam, bursts of extreme religious hatred such as we have just seen in Libya can only continue.

As long as Muslims claim that the well-documented brutal slaughters of Islamic conquest and the ensuing oppression of nations under the Islamic system of dhimmitude were a mercy to the world, the ‘opening’ up (al-futuh) of dark nations to light and truth, hatred towards non-Muslims will continue to arise in the house of Islam.

The fundamental problem is not peculiar variants of extreme religious worldviews, it is a deeply engrained religious worldview that is not acknowledged by many who hold it. Those who, like King Abdullah, allow it room to breathe by claiming that it is something other than what it really is are as much a part of the problem as the violent jihadis who are proud to own the worldview.

In the house of Islam, hatred has deep roots stretching back through time. In 1836 Edward Lane reported in The Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptiansthat it was standard practice in many Cairo schools to require Muslim school boys to invoke daily curses on the heads of Christians, Jews and other non-Muslims. In essence these curses called for the looting, killing and enslavement of non-Muslims. It is only against the backdrop of inter-generational hatred that a television series on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion could have become mainstream viewing in Egyptian society, and continuing kidnapping, rape and killings of Copts are perpetrated without justice for the victims.

There is an ill-wind of hatred blowing in the house of Islam and it has been blowing for a very long time indeed. When this wind is whipped up into a tornado, the world is appalled, but it is the constant steady breeze of hatred that is the root of the problem.

As this letter was addressed to the Christians of the world, here I give my personal reply to the Islamic State, written as a Christian:

I am not intimidated by your hatred. Our Lord Jesus Christ taught us not to fear those who may kill the body. The people of honour on that beach in Tripoli were those 21 courageous Copts, who dared to confess the name of Christ, even with a knife to their necks. They knew well what choice they were making. You thought to humiliate them, but the Word of God tells me they are the vindicated ones, the men of glory. I believe they knew that full well.

For you I have no hate, only pity. You wield the sword to kill ideas and worship you do not understand, but you do this in vain. The truth cannot be killed by your knives.

General Sisi of Egypt was right: because of you, people all over the world are doubting Islam.

Here is how a young Egyptian girl reacted to what you did:

‘I am encouraged because now I know that what we have been taught in history books about Egyptian Christians being martyred for their faith is not just history, but that there are Christians today who are brave enough to face death rather than deny their Lord! When I saw these young men praying as they were being prepared for execution and then many of them shouting ‘O Lord Jesus’ as their throats were being slit, I realized that the Gospel message can still help us to hold on to the promises of God even when facing death!’

This is the true truth, and it is precisely because of this truth that a new wind is blowing in the house of Islam: a fresh breeze of questioning, a wind of gentleness and openness. This is the life-giving breath of hope that there must be a different way to walk with God. You are men of the past: the future belongs to those you killed on the beach.

Dr Mark Durie is a theologian, human rights activist, Anglican pastor, a Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and Adjunct Research Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths at Melbourne School of Theology. He has published many articles and books on the language and culture of the Acehnese, Christian-Muslim relations and religious freedom. A graduate of the Australian National University and the Australian College of Theology, he has held visiting appointments at the University of Leiden, MIT, UCLA and Stanford, and was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1992.

A video released by the Islamic State shows fighters from one of its so-called provinces in Libya beheading 21 Egyptian Copts. The mass murders were advertised by Islamic State’s media operatives over the past couple of days. And the latest edition of the organization’s English-language magazine Dabiq, which was released last week, implied that the men had been killed.

In a scene that is similar to past videos from Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State’s victims are ritualistically walked along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea before being forced to kneel with their captors standing behind them.

An English-speaking fighter then talks, saying that he and his fellow jihadists are sending a message from “the south of Rome,” thereby threatening Italy. In recent weeks, members of the Italian government have called for more aggressive international intervention in Libya.

The fighter then says that the Islamic State and its allies will continue to fight the “Crusaders” until Jesus comes again. This is a reference to the apocalyptic Islamic belief that Jesus will reappear at the end of days.

The Islamic State’s head executioner says that the West hid Osama bin Laden’s body in the sea, and so the jihadists will mix the West’s blood in the same sea.

After the men are beheaded, the English-speaking fighter raises his knife to the water and swears that the Islamic State will conquer Rome.

The fighter’s reference to Osama bin Laden stands in stark contrast to the Islamic State’s denunciation of Ayman al Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor as al Qaeda chief, in the latest edition of Dabiq.

The Islamic State claimed in Dabiq that the kidnapping of the 21 Egyptian men came “almost five years after the blessed operation against the Baghdad church.” That attack was launched in late 2010 by the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI), the predecessor to the current Islamic State. The ISI claimed at the time that the suicide assault, which left dozens of people dead, was revenge for the supposed mistreatment of women in Egypt.

Abu Bakr al Baghdadi’s propagandists repeated this claim in Dabiq. But the Islamic State added that al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn, referred to by his nom de guerre Azzam al Amriki, condemned the act “in some of his letters” to the group. The Islamic State accused Gadahn of acting “on his personal rancor towards the Islamic State as soon as he became a top leader of [al Qaeda] after the martyrdom of” Osama bin Laden. Gadahn’s critique of the Islamic State’s practices are well-known, and his role in al Qaeda’s senior ranks predates bin Laden’s death.

The authors of Dabiq also accused Zawahiri of defending the Copts. “I want to restate our position towards the Coptic Christians. We do not want to get into a war with them because we are busy in the battle against the greatest enemy of the Ummah [America] and because they are our partners in this nation, partners whom we wish to live with in peace and stability,” the Islamic State quoted Zawahiri as saying.

“So while the Islamic State targeted the Catholics in revenge for the sisters imprisoned by the Copts, Azzam al Amriki’s commander [Zawahiri] was wooing the war-waging Copts themselves with feeble words,” Baghdadi’s men claimed in Dabiq.

The Islamic State has accused al Qaeda of being soft on Iran, as well as the Shiites in Iraq and Yemen. In executing the 21 Egyptian Copts, Baghdadi’s organization extended this argument further, claiming that al Qaeda weakly opposes, or does not oppose at all, Egypt’s Christians.

Thus, the beheadings shown in the newly released video were intended to intimidate both Egypt and Italy. And the Islamic State hopes to portray al Qaeda’s leaders as being weak-minded in their pursuit of jihad.

Images from the Islamic State’s new video and the latest edition of Dabiq magazine

The lead executioner points his knife at the Mediterranean Sea, promising that the Islamic State will conquer Rome:

In a scene reminiscent of the beheading videos to come out of Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State’s victims are lined up in front of their murderers:

The video includes the same scenes portrayed in the latest edition of Dabiq, the Islamic State’s English-language magazine:

The latest edition of Dabiq, which was released last week, included this image from the mass slaying:

The Coptic Christians of Egypt are — by any definition – victims, especially since the fall of Mubarak, but senior Homeland Security adviser Mohamed Elibiary disagrees. To him, the Copts are to be reprimanded for promoting “Islamophobia” and opposing the Muslim Brotherhood.

The estimated eight million Christians of Egypt have rallied behindthe presidential candidacy of General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, who led the military in overthrowing the Muslim Brotherhood rulers. Under his leadership, the Brotherhood has been banned as a terrorist organization. El-Sisi promised to rebuild or repair churches damaged by Brotherhood supporters and has even called for a reformation in Islam.

“If Egypt had not been saved by Sisi, you would have seen an exodus of all the Christians from Egypt,” says Naguib Sawiris, a high-profile Christian businessman in Egypt.

No one can rightly blame the Christians for backing El-Sisi, even if there are concerns about his government’s violations of civil liberties. The Christians view him as their rescuer and a strongman who can oversee a transition to a democracy. His main competitor, Hamdeen Sabahi, supports Al-Qaeda when it kills U.S. soldiers and is not viewed as a viable candidate.

Mohamed Elibiary, an openly pro-Muslim Brotherhood senior advisor to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, takes issue with the Copts support for El-Sisi. In a tweet on April 12, he linked to a TIME Magazine article titled, “Christians and Tyrants.” He added that some Coptic leaders and activists “have been extremely unwise & immoral.” The tweet can be seen below:

Elibiary was previously taken to task in September for his criticisms of the Copts. He tweeted that, since 9/11, “extremist American Coptic activists have nurtured anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiments.” In another, he spoke of the “need to reform Coptic activism in US including stop[ping] promoting Islamophobia.”

On Friday, March 28, in Ain Shams, a suburb of Cairo, Muslim Brotherhood supporters attacked the Virgin Mary and Archangel Michael Coptic Orthodox Church, including by opening fire on it and setting parked cars aflame. Four people died.

One of the slain, a young Coptic woman, was savagely mauled and molested before being murdered—simply because her cross identified her as a Christian to the Brotherhood rioters.

According to an eyewitness who discussed the entire event on the Egyptian program, 90 Minutes, Mary Sameh George was parking by the church to deliver medicine to a sickly, elderly woman:

Once they saw that she was a Christian [because of the cross hanging on her rear view mirror], they jumped on top of the car, to the point that the vehicle was no longer visible. The roof of the car collapsed in. When they realized that she was starting to die, they pulled her out of the car and started pounding on her and pulling her hair—to the point that portions of her hair and scalp came off. They kept beating her, kicking her, stabbing her with any object or weapon they could find…. Throughout [her ordeal] she tried to protect her face, giving her back to the attackers, till one of them came and stabbed her right in the back, near the heart, finishing her off. Then another came and grabbed her by the hair, shaking her head, and with the other hand slit her throat. Another pulled her pants off, to the point that she was totally naked.

The eyewitness, as well as many others who have since appeared on videos, complained about Egyptian State Security and how it did not intervene—just like under Morsi, when St. Mark Cathedral was besieged, even as security stood by—how it knows exactly who the murderers are, and how one of Mary’s murderers, whom “everyone reported to Security,” was simply relaxing in his home, not even hiding.

Added the eyewitness: “Let me tell you, here in Ain Shams, we [Christians] know that every Friday is a day of death; that the day after Friday, Saturday, we’ll be carried to the morgue!”

In fact, the overwhelming majority of attacks on Egypt’s Christians occur on Friday—the day when pious Muslims meet in mosque for prayers and to hear sermons.

The significance of this fact can only be understood by analogy: what if Christians were especially violent to non-Christian minorities on Sunday—right after they got out of church? What would that say about what goes on in Christian churches?

What does it say about what goes on in Muslim mosques?

A video of Mary’s family members has one woman screaming out the following words—which may be of interest to some Americans:

A message to [U.S. President Barack] Obama, who is calling for the Brotherhood to return to power again. I want to tell him, have mercy, enough is enough! His brother is in the al-Qaeda organization! Why do you want to destroy Egypt?….Egypt will remain whether you, the Brotherhood, or anyone else likes it or not!

The rest of the video portrays some of Mary’s other family members—many in tears and near hysteria—prompting one to wonder: where is the U.S media? I have not seen a word on this latest Islamic attack on a church and Christians on BBC, CNN, or any of the so-called “mainstream media”? Why is that? They had no problem constantly showing us (over and over again) a video clip of a hysterical female relative of a member of Malaysian flight MH370.

Who is more deserving of punishment by the United States? Millions of Egyptians, for ousting the Muslim Brotherhood? Or the Muslim Brotherhood, for habitually terrorizing and murdering Christians, among many other crimes?

Murdered Marys

According to the unmistakably clear actions of the Obama administration, it is the millions of anti-Brotherhood Egyptians who deserve punishment.

Last Sunday, the Church of the Virgin Mary in Waraq near Cairo was attacked during a wedding ceremony, leaving four dead and many wounded. According to Dr. Hisham Abdul Hamid of forensics, two of those who were murdered were Christian children—two girls; two Marys: 12-year-old Mary Nabil Fahmy, who took five shots in the chest, and 8-year-old Mary Ashraf Masih (meaning “Christ”), who took a bullet in the back which burst from the front.

So too are the murders of Christian children increasingly common in Egypt. Indeed, along with Sunday’s two murdered Marys, back in July, another Christian girl, 10-year-old Jessi Boulos, was shot dead while walking home from Bible class.

All of these church attacks and murders are a direct byproduct of the Muslim Brotherhood’s incitements against Egypt’s Christians in retaliation for the June 30 Revolution, which saw the ousting of the Brotherhood.

Needing someone to scapegoat in order to set Egypt ablaze, Brotherhood leadership—including supreme leader Muhammad Badie, Safwat Hegazi, and Al Jazeera’s Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi—repeatedly demonized the nation’s Christian minority, leading to any number ofatrocities committed against the Copts.

As today’s headline from one of Egypt’s most read newspapers, Tahrir News,put it: “The Brotherhood’s crime in Waraq [location of Sunday’s church attack]. Seventeen murdered Copts and 85 torched churches since ousting of Morsi… Copts pay price of June 30 Revolution.”

Now consider the response of the United States concerning the conflict between Egypt and the Muslim Brotherhood in the context of U.S. aid.

For years, human rights activists have been imploring the Obama administration to make aid to Egypt contingent on respect for the human rights of all Egyptians, including Christian minorities. Such a move would dramatically ameliorate the plight of the Copts, since all potential Egyptian governments, including the ousted Muslim Brotherhood, are more interested in securing money than in killing Christians.

Instead, the Obama administration’s approach has been 1) to ignore the plight of Egypt’s Christians and 2) when attacks are especially egregious (and exposed by the MSM) offer perfunctory condemnation. (After all, if the administration was able to get away with the lip-service approach among Americans—vocally condemning and promising to get the Muslim Brotherhood-linked murderers of Americans in Benghazi but then ignoring it—surely it will not hesitate doing so with a foreign nation.)

As for making U.S. aid to Egypt contingent on respect for human rights, the Obama administration has been idle.

On the other hand, when those who are responsible for the destruction of nearly 100 Christian churches (including an unprecedented attack on the holiest Coptic church back when Morsi was still president) and the murders of Copts and their children finally get ousted by the Egyptian people and their military, it is then that the Obama administration moves and punishes, cutting hundreds of millions in aid to Egypt in direct response to the ouster of the Muslim Brotherhood (in other nations, like Syria, the administration supports the Christian-slaughtering, al-Qaeda linked terrorists).

What more proof can any sensible American need to know that the Muslim-named president of the United States is in league with Muslim terrorists?

Police on Monday searched for a gunman who killed three people at a church wedding, in the first attack targeting Christians in Cairo since the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist president.

An eight-year-old girl was among those killed at the Church of the Virgin in Cairo’s working class neighbourhood of Al-Warrak, while 18 others were wounded in the late Sunday attack, officials said.

“There were two men on a motorbike and one of them opened fire,” as a crowd emerged from a wedding service, the interior ministry said.

Khaled al-Khatib, a senior official from the health ministry, confirmed the casualties, though it was not immediately clear if all three were Coptic Christians.

Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi condemned the attack in a cabinet statement, calling it a “despicable criminal act,” and said security forces were searching for the assailants.

“Such terrible acts will not succeed in dividing Muslims and Christians,” he said.

Egyptian Christians, the majority of whom are Copts, have been targeted since Morsi was swept out of power by the army amid mass protests against his year-long rule, and in particular since an August 14 crackdown by security forces on two Cairo camps of Morsi supporters.

Islamists were enraged by the deadly crackdown and accused Coptic Christians of backing the coup that toppled Morsi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood and was Egypt’s first democratically elected president.

This perception was fuelled by the appearance of Coptic Pope Tawadros II alongside army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi when he announced on television Morsi’s removal from office.

Muslim leaders and other politicians were also present.

Rights groups say that Copts, who account for six to 10 percent of Egypt’s 85 million people, have come under attack mainly in the provinces of Minya and Assiut in central Egypt.

Earlier this month London-based Amnesty International said that more than 200 Christian-owned properties were attacked and 43 churches seriously damaged across the country since the August 14 crackdown.

In its report Amnesty International blamed Egyptian security forces for failing to stop “revenge attacks” against Coptic Christians after the violent dispersal of the pro-Morsi camps.

Elibiary sent out a series of tweets that Coptic leaders found offensive last month. The tweets appeared to chastise the Coptic community for lobbying on behalf of their relatives in Egypt. He targeted them because they had aligned themselves with conservative groups that he called “Islamophobic.”

Elibiary personally attacked Michael Meunier, president of Egypt’s al-Haya Party, two days earlier after Meunier spoke with The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) about Elibiary’s earlier offensive tweets against the Copts.

Meunier denounced Elibiary’s personal attack, saying the issue had nothing to do with Islamophobia – but that Elibiary threw out a straw man to protect the totalitarian Muslim Brotherhood.

“If you look at him you can definitely see that he is a sympathizer of the Brotherhood,” Meunier said. “If you are in the Brotherhood you don’t have a card. The guy put up the sign for R4BIA [on his Twitter account], a symbol for people who burn churches and kill people.”

Brotherhood defenders are trying to smear their critics as anti-Muslim bigots, rather than people concerned about Brotherhood violence and repression, Meunier said. “He has a grudge against my activism, my spending two months in Washington, highlighting the vicious activities of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

R4BIA takes its name from Cairo’s Rabia ad-Alawiya Square, where hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood protesters were killed in armed clashes with Egyptian security forces in August.

The #R4BIA platform includes a litany of principles that run in open opposition to Western values. It invokes concepts such as: “pure martyrdom”; “unification of the Muslim World”; “the end of Zionists”; “the birth of a new movement for freedom and justice”; “justice for everyone against rotten Islamic values”; “the end of oil sheikhs”; and “the end of capitalists.”

“Western concepts such as democracy, human rights, freedom, equality and right to life, often exercised in a double standard, have utterly collapsed in Palestine, Syria, Bosnia and lastly in Egypt. With the spirit of the Rabia sign, these and similar concepts will be reinterpreted based on Islamic principles,” the section “How did R4BIA emerge?” says.

In a Twitter exchange with the IPT, Elibiary said that he has a nuanced view of the Muslim Brotherhood.

But does his “nuance” include a private endorsement of the #R4BIA movement’s stated goals? Elibiary is not talking despite several invitations by the IPT on Twitter to sit down in person and talk about his views on R4BIA and other issues despite his challenge for dialog.

The R4BIA platform page makes extensive positive references to Sayyid Qutb, a Muslim Brotherhood leader executed in 1966 who explicitly called for violent jihad against infidels; his books are replete with massive anti-Semitic and anti-Christian dogma and conspiracies such as the Jews’ control of world finance.

He seemed perplexed when others questioned him about Qutb’s extremism, telling one questioner he was “curious” about the label.

Qutb called on Muslims to fight non-Muslims unless they pay the jizya or poll tax. That’s a tribute given by non-Muslims to Muslims in exchange for allowing them to practice their religion and keep their lives safe. Qutb also advocated using violenceagainst those who do not convert to Islam.

In the IPT’s new documentary, “The Grand Deception,” former Brotherhood member Abdurrahman Muhammad explains that even universal principles such as ‘justice’ have a different meaning to the Brotherhood than it does for Americans. Justice in the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood’s eyes, Muhammad says, only exists when a state is ruled as a theocracy under Islamic law.

“We will never have justice until we have an Islamic state because whoever doesn’t rule by what Allah has revealed is an oppressor,” Muhammad says in the film, explaining Muslim Brotherhood thought.

Brotherhood apologists such as Elibiary attempt to define the Brotherhood as “moderate.” Yet Rafik Habib, a Coptic Christian Brotherhood apologist whom Elibiary respects, told American diplomats that even the “left-wing” of the Islamist group were not “moderates” in a Western sense. He said their goal was a “religious state where Sharia is applied to all aspects of life.”

Elibiary did not reply when the IPT asked him if he was willing to condemn extremist and racist statements and actions by Muslim Brotherhood leaders. These included threats of expelling the Copts if they did not accept Sharia, Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie’s description of Jews as the sons of “apes” and “pigs,” and Qutb’s violent statements about Muslim relations with non-Muslims.

Dalia Moghaed, credited with helping President Obama draft his June 2009 Cairo speech about American relations with the Islamic world, recently downplayed attacks against Egypt’s Coptic Christians on a Facebook page.

More than 80 Coptic churches were burned by Brotherhood supporters after the Egyptian military’s crackdown last month on Muslim Brotherhood encampments in Cairo. A local branch of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party appeared to sanction violence in retaliation for the Coptic Church’s backing of the Egyptian military.

Nonetheless, Mogahed pointed the finger at the Egyptian media.

“The Egyptian media took advantage of the Copts to achieve many personal/political gains, which has angered the West,” Mogahed said in a Sept. 22 post which appeared on the Facebook page of the Egyptian Americans for Democracy and Human Rights (EADHR).

The EADHR was founded by members of the Muslim American Society (MAS), which in turn was founded as an “overt arm” of the Egyptian Brotherhood.

Mogahed isn’t the only American Islamist tied to the Obama administration to slam the Copts on social media.

In a Sept. 15 Twitter post, Mohamed Elibiary, a member of the Department of Homeland Security’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, accused American Coptic activists of fanning hatred of Islam.

In earlier tweets, Elibiary attacked American Copts for protesting against how their relatives in Egypt have been treated by the Islamists.

“Good read by @mwhanna1 on need to reform #Coptic activism in #US including stop promoting #Islamophobia,” Elibiary wrote Sept. 14.

“I think the Obama administration should be ashamed to have had someone like this in their administration,” said Michael Meunier, president of Egypt’s Al-Haya Party and a Coptic activist. “This underscores the thinking inside the Obama administration.”

Brotherhood groups in the United States and their supporters are lashing out at the Copts, who have been among the Muslim Brotherhood’s visceral critics, and dismiss their grievances as mere bigotry. Meunier charged that the Brotherhood is trying to slander the Copts to reduce their effectiveness.

“The Copts have nothing to be ashamed of. Morsi made the Copts’ lives’ hell, so they got together with the moderate Muslims to overthrow Morsi,” Meunier said. “The Muslim Brotherhood victimized the Copts, and now it wants to blame them.”

Expatriate Egyptian Coptic Christian writer Samuel Tadros has just observed how Egypt’s Copts—the country’s indigenous, pre-Arab Islamic jihad inhabitants—have been under siege by a recent spate of Muslim Brotherhood inspired and led church burnings, which punctuates the worst outbreak of anti-Coptic Muslim violence since the era of Muslim Mamluk rule (i.e., the 13th to 16th centuries).

Tadros was alluding to the effects of mainstream Islam upon its Egyptian Muslim votaries, resulting in the inexorable attrition of the Coptic population by the mid 14th century—the indigenous, pre-Islamic majority reduced to a permanent, vulnerable minority by the usual pattern of Islamization, via jihad: massacre, destruction and pillage of religious sites, forced or coerced conversion, and expropriation. This chronic process intensified and reached its apogee in a series of 14th century pogroms and persecutions, described by the great Muslim historian al-Maqrizi:

Many reports came from both Upper and Lower Egypt of Copts being converted to Islam, frequenting mosques, and memorizing the Quran, to the extent that some of them were able to establish their legal competence and sit with the legal witnesses. In all the provinces of Egypt, both north and south, no church remained that had not been razed; on many of those sites mosques were constructed. For when the Christians’ affliction grew great and their incomes small, they decided to embrace Islam.

Egyptian military strongman, and recent putschist, General al-Sisi issued an ecumenical sounding statement pledging that that army engineers would assist in the reconstruction of the devastated churches, as reported on August 16, 2013:

The Egyptian defense minister ordered the engineering department of the armed forces to swiftly repair all the affected churches, in recognition of the historical and national role played by our Coptic brothers.

But these noble-sounding words have rung hollow given the subsequent, ongoing lack of protection the Egyptian military has afforded its “Coptic brothers.” As reported on August 20th, Bishop General of Minya (in Upper Egypt, four hours from Cairo) Anba Macarius was critical of the army’s continued feeble response, claiming their lack of initiative in protecting churches and other Christian buildings engendered the ideal environment in which “crime and terrorism flourish.” Macarius declared:

First we must protect the Christians and the feelings of those who have suffered loss. Now we are calling on the state to protect the churches and the army to come onto the streets.

The morally reprehensible inaction of Egypt’s allegedly “secular” army—failing to protect its hapless and beleaguered Coptic minority—heightens concerns over the direction of this institution under a demonstrably anti-secular leader, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi. In a detailed analysis of al-Sisi’s 2006 US Army War College mini-thesis—which had to be obtained via a Freedom of Information Act request—I demonstrated that he is vociferously opposed to the kind of Western secular consensus model of government Egypt so desperately requires. Moreover, al-Sisi’s mini-thesis also espoused ardent Sharia-supremacist views, highlighted by his lionization of the classical Islamic Caliphate system.

Why does this matter, in the immediate term, both morally and strategically? As my colleague David French wrote in a passionate denunciation of the Egyptian army’s current predilections, and concomitant U.S. moral and strategic blindness:

As churches burn, as nuns are paraded through the streets by the Muslim Brotherhood, and as Christians across Egypt fear for their lives in the face of the jihadist onslaught, American policy can and should get very simple, very fast: Not one scintilla of aid until the Egyptian military demonstrates — by deeds, not just words — that it is committed to stopping this wave of persecution in its tracks, protecting the most basic human rights of its Christian citizens, and utterly defeating the Muslim Brotherhood.

A group of Egyptians protested in front of the White House Thursday afternoon to “expose” what they say is “the clear bias of the Obama administration and the American media in support of the Muslim Brotherhood and its terrorist ideology.”

Hundreds of Egyptians, who travelled to Washington, D.C. from around the United States, gathered in front of the White House before marching to the offices of the Washington Post, news network CNN, and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group that protestors called the Brotherhood’s “embassy.”

Protest organizers called on “all Egyptians” living in the U.S. to join their march, which took place as violence in Egypt continues to rage between the Muslim Brotherhood and secular military forces.

The marchers’ final stop was the Egyptian military attaché’s D.C. office, where the activists chanted their support for “the Egyptian army for its heroic stand against [Muslim Brotherhood] terrorism.”

“We are against the Muslim Brotherhood,” protestor Ramez Mossed told theFree Beacon. “He [Obama] supports the Muslim Brotherhood. He has a big hand in Egypt and the mess in Egypt. We’re trying to tell him, ‘Don’t support the terrorists. Please be fair.’”

Many of those who participated in the march are Coptic Christians, a religious group that has been systematically targeted with violence by pro-Brotherhood protestors, some of whom have been desecrating and sieging churches in Egypt.

The protestors gathered on the curb outside of the White House lofting signs that read, “We support the Egyptian Army,” and “The Muslim Brotherhood never renounced terrorism.”

“You can burn down our churches but you can never touch our faith,” read another sign.

“I love this sign,” said one passerby who saw the sign referring to the churches. “I believe it too.”

As the military (with the support of secular groups that don’t want an Islamist state) battles the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Americans argue over how to react, we should look back at history to understand why we should support the military as the lesser of two evils and hope for its success. Those who know the history of the Muslim Brotherhood and see the murderous attacks it has launched on the homes, businesses, schools, and churches of Coptic Christians, who represent about 10 percent of the population, will recognize that we have seen this type of behavior before.

The Brotherhood is simply using the same tactics and ideology of the political party that it allied itself with in the 1930s and 40s: the Nazi Party. What is happening to the Coptic Christians being beaten, kidnapped, and killed all over Egypt is similar to[1] what happened to Jews in Germany during Kristallnacht[2] on November 9-10, 1938, when Jews were killed and beaten and their homes, stores, schools, and synagogues ransacked, looted, and demolished in Germany and Austria.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Sheikh Hassan al-Banna, who was a great admirer of Adolf Hitler and who formed an alliance with the Nazis. The Brotherhood helped distribute translated copies of Mein Kampf and other Nazi propaganda. The ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood is eerily similar to Nazi fascism, including its ultimate objective of world conquest and a new caliphate. The only difference is it believes in the supremacy of Islam instead of the supremacy of the Aryan race.

The Nazis even helped fund the Great Arab Revolt of 1936-1939 against the Jews and British in Palestine, which was led by Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem, and one of the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was al-Husseini who met with Hitler in 1941[3] and helped augment the traditional Arab hatred of Jews with plans for a genocidal campaign against Jews.

The fascist origins of the Muslim Brotherhood are fully ingrained in everything it does. Its hatred for Jews has migrated into a hatred of all non-Muslims, particularly Christian Arabs. In the Muslim Brotherhood’s eyes, Coptic Egyptians are traitors to their race and the only true religion, Islam. Many Americans refuse to understand that jihadists like the Brotherhood do not accept any separation between church and state — the only acceptable government is a Muslim theocratic state based on Sharia law.

There is another parallel to Nazi Germany in the situation in Egypt that Americans should also keep in mind. Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were democratically elected in the 1932 elections just like Mohamed Morsi was in 2012. Hitler then set out to destroy Germany’s democracy[4] and make himself and the Nazi Party its supreme ruler. Morsi has spent the past year taking the same type of steps, slowly throttling his opposition and media critics, and working to make his formally banned fascist party, the Muslim Brotherhood, sovereign over all of Egypt.

Just like Hitler and the Nazis, the Muslim Brotherhood wants full dictatorial control of the country and the elimination of Jews, Christians, and all non-Muslims. There is no question that if they can gain control of the military, they will do everything possible to prepare for and launch a war to destroy Israel. That is a fundamental tenet of their ideology.

Many forget that Hitler had a very uneasy relationship initially with the German military. It was the only viable force in Germany that could have deposed Hitler and the Nazis as they started to consolidate power. But the military never did so and Hitler acted quickly to take control of the military to prevent any such opposition from developing. It was only late in the war in 1944 that a small number of senior military officers finally tried to assassinate Hitler to get rid of him and end the war.

But what if the German military had acted much earlier? Hitler in essence consolidated his power[5] in the two years from 1932 to 1934 through a complicated series of actions, including plots like the Reichstag fire, the Night of the Long Knives, and the passage of various laws that effectively swept away all of his opposition. If the German military had crushed Hitler, his SA Brownshirts, the Hitler Youth, the SS, and all of the other Nazi Party affiliates in 1933, perhaps millions of people would not have died in a genocidal war and Nazi concentration camps. The history of Europe might have been completely different.

Fortunately, the Egyptian military has acted before Morsi and his own Muslim Brotherhood Brownshirts had the full opportunity to consolidate their power. Morsi and his clan are thugs with views no different than those who stood in the docks at Nuremberg from 1945 to 1949. If we can learn anything from the history of the 1930s and Nazi Germany, we should be hoping that the Egyptian military is successful in crushing the new version of the Nazis in the Middle East. That is the only way that a real democracy will ever have a chance to be born in Egypt.

The damaged interior of the Saint Moussa Church is seen a day after it was torched in sectarian violence following the dispersal of two Cairo sit-ins of supporters of the ousted Islamist President Mohammed Morsi, in Minya, south of Cairo, Egypt, Thursday, Aug. 15, 2013. (Photo: AP)

WASHINGTON, Aug. 16, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Coptic Solidarity is gravely concerned that continued Western support for the Muslim Brotherhood is directly responsible for the violent tactics they are now using against Coptic Christians and transitional authorities. The months following Mubarak’s ouster prove that the Western cliche claiming the Muslim Brotherhood has renounced violence is unequivocally false.

The transitional government moved to break up several pro-Morsi sit-ins on August 14th. Although depicted as peaceful political demonstrations by Western media, these protestors have been amassing weapons to perpetrate attacks against anti-Morsi individuals. Documentation also proves these protestors have kidnapped, tortured, and killed Egyptians merely for their political beliefs and religious affiliations.

The coordinated and near immediate violence led countrywide by the Muslim Brotherhood and Gamaa Islamya militias, shows that peaceful sit-ins have been a charade and that the violence was pre-planned. This violence is unprecedented in modern Egyptian history.

Latest reports indicate that 62 Christian establishments have been attacked, ransacked, and/or set ablaze. This includes churches, monasteries, schools and charities, from Orthodox, Catholic, and Evangelical traditions. Additionally, hundreds of Copts-owned businesses, homes, and cars have been destroyed. An accurate accounting of deaths and injuries is not yet available. Forty-three police officers were killed, mostly defending police centers attacked by Islamists. In Kirdasa, Gizeh, nine officers’ bodies were discovered horribly mutilated.

This violence follows increasing attacks against Copts in recent months. Since Morsi was deposed, Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Qaeda, and Salafist leaders have called on jihadists to come to Egypt to repossess the government. These leaders and the Islamist street mobs are exacting retribution on Copts for participating in the June 30th demonstrations like millions of their Muslim compatriots.

Overt efforts are being made to intimidate and threaten the Coptic community. Jihadists raised the Al-Qaeda flag over churches, including the St. George Church in Sohag. Graffiti disparaging Christians has been painted throughout the country. Islamists have distributed flyers threatening Christians. Hundreds of Christians have fled their homes, especially in the Sinai where there is virtually no protection from jihadists. Intentions of cleansing Egypt of its Christians are no more hidden.

There has been a rash of violent attacks against Copts. In July, Coptic priest Mina Sharubim was gunned down in North Sinai. Christian businessman, Magdy Lamay Habib, was found decapitated in the Sinai.Jessica Boulous, a young Coptic girl was recently gunned down in Cairo while returning home from a Bible class.

Coptic Solidarity President, Adel Guindy, states, “It is imperative that Egyptian authorities provide immediate protection to Copts and their establishments. Western governments need to condemn this Muslim Brotherhood -perpetrated violence and finally distance themselves from terrorism. The Egyptian people are closely watching to see if the U.S. and EU will support true democracy and human rights, or continue in their misguided policies of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Coptic Solidarity is non-profit organization dedicated to leading efforts to achieve equal citizenship for the Copts in Egypt. For information, contact Lindsay 801-512-1713, Hal 240-644-5153 orinfo@copticsolidarity.org